Raza library brings out Ramayan in Persian

Tuesday, 08 May 2012 18:13
administrator

The Vice President of India releases a Persian and Hindi version of Ramayan.

New Delhi. The Vice President of India Mr M. Hamid Ansari has said that Ramayan is accepted as the Adi Kavya and Maharishi Valmiki as Adi Kavi. It is closest to representing Indian culture, vision, values and importance of moral values in public and private lives. Addressing after releasing the “Three volumes of Sumer Chand's 'Valmiki Ramayan' in Hindi and Persian” brought out by Rampur Raza Library, Rampur, at a function here today. He said that every social and linguistic group in India has adopted and made Ramayan its own. It has travelled beyond the shores of India and influenced societies and civilizations afar in contexts that are distinct and different from the cultural and religious milieu of India.

Mr Ansari said that the functional quest, to know and understand better the traditions and thought processes of large sections of population, was the rationale for a medieval ruler or ruling group to seek a translation of such texts in their working language.

The three volumes of the Persian version of the Valmiki Ramayan were penned by Sumer Chand in the year 1715 and translated into Hindi and edited by Prof. Shah Abdus Salam and Dr. Waqarul Hasan Siddiqui. The Balmiki Ramayan is in Persian Nasta'liq script and like other manuscripts of that period, is beautifully illustrated.

The Raza Library hosts rare copies of the holy Qur'an, a 14th century text of Rashiduddin’s Jami-ut-Tawarikh, a 15th century manuscript of Firdausi’s Shah-Nama and another of Sad Pand-e-Luqman bearing the signatures of emperors Jahangir and Shah Jahan, and innumerable 16th and 17th century manuscripts on history and literature.

Mr Ansari added, "The centrality of the personality of Ram, in the cultural consciousness of India and Indians, is amply demonstrated in the poet Mohammad Iqbal’s poem entitled ‘Ram’. One couplet says it all: